Plants

Creepy trees that appear to devour objects, structures, and even other trees aren’t performing any kind of deliberate predation, but the visual effect can be genuinely unsettling once you understand the biology behind it. A tree trunk grows almost entirely in diameter through a thin layer of cells called the cambium, and anything left in … Read more

Trees that grow eerie or weird shapes tend to earn that reputation through some combination of extreme age, a genuinely strange evolutionary strategy, or growing in conditions so harsh that survival itself twists the tree into something unrecognizable. A handful owe their unsettling reputation to real, well-documented danger rather than just appearance, while others have … Read more

The best weeds for animal feed often turn out to be the same plants a gardener spends the summer pulling, since many common lawn and pasture weeds carry protein, mineral, and vitamin levels that rival or exceed cultivated forage crops. That overlap between “weed” and “valuable forage” isn’t a coincidence, since the same aggressive growth … Read more

Edible woodland plants in the UK range from ancient-woodland indicator species that have grown in the same patches of ground for centuries to common hedgerow opportunists that have spread into almost every wood on the island. As with foraging anywhere, positive identification always comes first, since several genuinely dangerous plants, including cuckoo pint and deadly … Read more

Types of strawberries span a genuinely enormous range once you look past the handful of varieties sold at a typical grocery store, covering everything from tiny, intensely aromatic wild species to enormous, firm-fleshed commercial hybrids bred specifically to survive a cross-country truck shipment. Nearly every cultivated strawberry sold today descends from a single 18th-century cross … Read more

Large weeds earn that description in more than one way, and this list focuses specifically on overall size and spread rather than height or leaf dimensions alone, since a plant can be genuinely enormous by covering acres of open water or forming an impenetrable thicket the size of a house without ever growing particularly tall. … Read more

Tall weeds with thick stalks share a basic engineering problem that every fast-growing plant has to solve: supporting several feet of leaf and flower mass without the benefit of years of accumulated wood. Most solve it the same way, by packing a hollow or pith-filled stem with just enough rigid fiber to stay upright through … Read more

The hardest weeds to kill tend to rely on one of a handful of biological strategies rather than any single trait, which is exactly why no single herbicide, pulling technique, or timing window works against all of them. Some survive by storing enormous energy reserves in root systems that plunge many feet underground, regrowing from … Read more

Weeds that look like trees actually split into two genuinely different categories once you look closely. Some are true, fully woody trees that simply aren’t wanted where they’ve sprouted, either because they’re aggressive volunteers from a nearby seed source or because they were once deliberately planted and have since become recognized as invasive nuisances. Others … Read more

Everbearing strawberry plants promise something June-bearing varieties simply can’t: more than one harvest window in a single growing season. According to Iowa State University Extension, true everbearers produce 2 separate crops each year, typically one in early summer and a second, lighter crop in fall, which sets them apart from both classic June-bearing types that … Read more